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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26849134">Maman</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mintaka14/pseuds/Mintaka14'>Mintaka14</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Miraculous Ladybug</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Good Parents Sabine Cheng &amp; Tom Dupain, Marinette Dupain-Cheng Needs a Hug, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug Needs a Break, Other, Protective Sabine Cheng, mild salt?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:27:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,313</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26849134</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mintaka14/pseuds/Mintaka14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Marinette is back from New York, at the end of her emotional reserves, and in desperate need of hugs from her maman.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>121</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Maman</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Full disclosure - I haven't seen the New York special, I have no intention of seeing the New York special. Thank you to @miraculouscontent for the summary they did of the special which I consulted for this, and any inconsistencies or errors are my own. I can live with that. But the feels that have been going around since the special aired left me needing more hugs. See the end notes for more.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Maman</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>A Miraculous Ladybug fanfiction</strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>By Mintaka14</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sabine heard the bus pulling in at the school over the last customer in the bakery, then the woman’s voice called her attention back and she focused on boxing up the order. By the time the door tinkled and the woman had left, Sabine could see Marinette standing on the other side of the road with her luggage and she hurried to the door to hold it open for her.</p>
<p>Marinette was smiling as she heard Sabine call out to her, but even at that distance Sabine could see that it was tense and tight, stretching a little too much as she dragged her pink-spotted suitcase across the road. Sabine waited until Marinette was inside before she wrapped her in a hug.</p>
<p>“Welcome home, sweetheart. It’s so good to have you back. How was the trip?” she asked with careful enthusiasm.</p>
<p>“Oh, it was wonderful!” Marinette’s smile grew wider, taut, and then it snapped. She dropped the bag and buried the sob that escaped in her hands. Sabine had her arms around her daughter, pulling her closer, stroking her hair as the sobs grew heavier. Tom had come to the door, his flour-covered expression of distress shifting from Marinette to Sabine and back again. Before he could say anything, Sabine made a tiny gesture, waving him towards the counter, and she bundled her daughter upstairs, making soothing noises all the while.</p>
<p>“Does the universe hate me, Maman?” Marinette sniffled into Sabine’s shoulder, and Sabine cuddled her closer.</p>
<p>“Oh, darling.”</p>
<p>“I’m trying so hard to get over Adrien, but first the plane seat… and the doors … and …”</p>
<p>“Start with the plane, baobei. Can you tell me what happened?”</p>
<p>“My seat was next to A.. Adrien. I had a panic attack on the plane,” Marinette admitted in a small voice, and Sabine found herself frowning. How had her daughter’s crush become so bad that it had gone from blushing and mooning over magazine photos to a full-blown panic attack? How had Sabine missed that?</p>
<p>“What did your teacher say?”</p>
<p>“She thought I was overreacting.”</p>
<p>“Overreacting?” Sabine repeated. She pressed her lips shut on the questions that that raised – time and enough when Marinette was feeling less distraught to find out exactly what the teacher with duty of care had or hadn’t done – but not for the first time, Sabine was wishing that she’d dug a little deeper into what was going on at the school rather than accepting Marinette’s assurance that everything was fine again. “But your friends noticed, surely? Didn’t Alya help you?”</p>
<p>Her daughter shook, burying her face in Sabine’s shoulder. “Alya said… she told Ms Mendeleiev that I was airsick and she finally moved me to a different seat, and then, oh god, it was so humiliating … and Adrien…” things dissolved into sobbing again, and Sabine tried to make out what had happened between the hiccups “… it just never goes right, and he doesn’t like me like that. He’s dating Kagami now. I want to be over him, I’m trying to be over him, but Alya…”</p>
<p>Alya again. What was going on there?</p>
<p>“It sounds like it was a rough trip,” Sabine said gently. “How was the rest of New York?”</p>
<p>“There was some good stuff,” Marinette mumbled into her shoulder, but she didn’t sound sure of that. “And then… then…” she sniffled again, and Sabine caught the odd word here and there about <em>owl</em> and <em>bike</em> and <em>rain</em>, none of which made any sense to Sabine, but that could wait. In the mess of Marinette’s stumbling explanations, Sabine didn’t feel that she’d got to the bottom of her daughter’s overwrought state yet, but two names were at the heart of it all. Adrien, and Alya.</p>
<p>Sabine patted her gently, stroking her hair while she waited for the sobbing to subside. She looked around the room over Marinette’s head and her mouth pursed. It felt like a thousand blond heads and sweet smiles were staring back at her from the photos around the walls, although Sabine could see more empty patches of pink and pinholes where Marinette had cleared some of the photos of Adrien away. She had thought she was doing the right thing, giving Marinette her space and waiting for her first real crush to settle down into a fond memory. Sabine remembered a few crazy things that she’d done herself in her early teens.</p>
<p>And much as she liked her daughter’s best friend, she knew how overwhelming Alya could be when she got an idea in her head. She’d thought that the young reporter was having a good influence on Marinette, helping her to find her feet and come out of her shell, and Marinette had been so happy and so much more outgoing since she’d made friends with Alya, even if there had been a few rough moments between them lately.</p>
<p>Sabine had thought she was letting Marinette have the space and independence to work out her own friendships. She’d thought her daughter would talk to her if things were troubling her, but clearly now she’d been wrong.</p>
<p>She kissed her daughter’s smooth black hair. “I’m going to tuck you into bed now,” she said gently. “You need sleep, and then you need a proper breakfast in the morning. And then,” Sabine looked around the room and the walls of Adrien again, “tomorrow, would you like me to help you take down these photos? We can put them in a box, you don’t have to throw them out. You can keep them somewhere safe until you’re ready, but I think you’re doing the wise thing to work on letting go of something that makes you this unhappy, and maybe that would be a good start.”</p>
<p>Marinette didn’t say anything, but the tension seeped out of her shoulders, and she sagged into her pillows as Sabine helped her out of her jeans and pulled up the quilt. Marinette still shook with the occasional sob, but she would fall asleep soon, and then tomorrow – they would deal with things together.</p>
<p>Sabine smoothed back her daughter’s hair and stood there watching her for a long moment, praying that she hadn’t let things go on too long. Her little girl was so precious. So precious.</p>
<p>As she turned out the light, Marinette’s phone beeped gently from the floor where she’d dropped it, and Sabine scooped it up, silencing it before it could disturb Marinette. She glanced at it as she went downstairs, and her mouth tightened further – <em>Hey gurl gonna come get you tmrw morning, gonna get icecream ur “friend” Adrien is coming so not taking no for an answer! </em>Sabine shut off the phone with unnecessary force and left it on the kitchen bench. It could wait until the morning.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When the bell over the shop door rang mid-morning, Marinette was still asleep. Sabine looked up from the cash register, and her welcoming smile faded into something more reserved when Alya bounced through the door and gave her a wave.</p>
<p>“Hi Sabine! Is Marinette awake yet? I’ve come to drag her out for a bit of fresh air and fun.”</p>
<p>“Marinette’s still asleep,” Sabine told her, and Alya rolled her eyes with a conspiratorial laugh that clearly Sabine was supposed to respond to.</p>
<p>“She’d sleep through anything. No wonder she’s always late. Is it okay if I go on up? I’ll get her out of bed.”</p>
<p>Alya had started towards the door already, but Sabine dusted off her hands and moved to intercept her.</p>
<p>“Marinette needs her sleep. She’s not going anywhere today,” Sabine cut her off firmly. “And I need to have a word with you.”</p>
<p>Alya was staring at her in surprise.</p>
<p>“I want to find out what happened in New York, and I want to have a chat to you about what being a good friend to Marinette means right now.”</p>
<p>               </p>
<p>               </p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Some of the stuff that's been inevitably crossing my path after the NY special, in spite of my efforts to avoid it, have left me with one overwhelming feeling - that Marinette needs a hug, and I wanted to see her maman give her one. There are a lot of interpretations of Sabine and Tom out there, from loving and supportive to neglectful and arguably abusive, and there have been a few moments when my eyebrows have been raised at the way they come across (the expulsion, anyone?). And I've read a lot of interpretations of Sabine and Tom that paint them as neglectful because they didn't say or do the right thing at the right time. Those interpretations aren't necessarily invalid - they're an interesting possible narrative path.</p>
<p>But here's the thing - parenting is hard, and it's impossible to get it right all the time. My daily prayer is that I don't screw it up too badly - that I haven't stayed back when I should have intervened, or stepped in when I should have stayed out of it, or spoken up when I should have stayed quiet and listened, or stayed silent when my child needed me to say something. Or that I got the words right. Or that I didn't just make the casual throw-away comment that they'll see as being proof that I'll reject them or won't listen. Or that I didn't trust them enough to find their own way. Or... there are a million and a million more ways for me to do damage to the people most precious to me, and it is almost certain that I will without ever meaning to. And I may not know how or why I screwed up for many years, or ever. But I love them, and I will never stop trying to do the best by them, and I will never stop agonising over whether I'm getting it right or not, even if it doesn't look like I'm doing anything. And they are never going to be too old for me to hug them and tell them I'm here. I wanted to see Marinette get some of that. I think she needs it after New York.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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